Yet greater love hath no collector than to scour a junkyard to find treasures to expand his collection.

It was common knowledge-or at least one heckuva great tale-that priceless prizes lay in the Warhoops salvage yard in Sterling Heights, Mich.

Warhoops was contracted by General Motors Corp. in the `50s to dispose of the automaker`s dream cars, which had been used on the Motorama circuit.

In 1953, GM challenged its design studios to come up with special cars for the Motorama circuit, a traveling roadshow that spotlighted exotic technical displays along with regular production models and dream cars. Motorama was the precursor of the modern-day auto shows.

The dream cars were hand-built to test future external designs. Often the controls and sometimes the components didn`t even work.

In many cases, there wasn`t even an engine under the hood because the dream cars were design or styling exercises. As such, they were supposed to be destroyed, to ensure they didn`t get on the streets and into actual consumer use.

''Everyone knew such cars existed and for years lots of people said they were stored at Warhoops; but no one was ever allowed in the yard, so no one ever could be sure,'' Bortz said.

''Then one day last year my son Mark, who is 22, saw a picture in Automobile Quarterly magazine of the `56 Biscayne in Warhoops junkyard,''

Bortz said.

''I told him that it must be an old picture, that the car must be gone by now so don`t bother,'' Bortz said. ''It would be like going to California and trying to dig for gold again.

''Besides, I`d heard stories of people calling up Warhoops only to have them hang up on you.''

Mark called anyway. He got Harry Warhoops on the phone, the 80-year-old owner.

''Harry was about to hang up when Mark mentioned he was my son. Harry said he knew of me from stories about my collection of dream cars.

''There are three dream car collections in the world, Blackhawk in California with fewer than 10 cars, General Motors with 10 to 15, and mine at 29,'' Bortz said.

''Harry said he was glad Mark called. Then he said he had a 1956 Cadillac Eldorado Town Car, the concept of what became the 1957 production model Eldorado, and he`d like me to have it,'' Bortz said.

Warhoops, it turned out, had hidden the Eldorado for many years in the hope of seeing it eventually go to a serious dream car collector.

''So I drove to Michigan and went to the junkyard,'' Bortz said. ''Harry walks me to the very back of the place where he lifts up a tarp and there`s the `56 Eldorado.''

It wasn`t exactly in showroom shape, however. For starters, the Eldorado was resting axle deep in mud. And the fiber-glass body sported a few chips and cracks.

Needless to say, a creepy crawler and a rodent or two were less eager than Warhoops to part with the car they called home-or at least a nesting place. But considering it had been sitting there for perhaps 30 years without any tender loving care, it looked as good as new to Bortz.

''Harry told me he`d call me later with the price, so I went home.''

Within a week, Warhoops contacted Bortz.

''I expected to make a generous offer for the Eldorado, but his asking price went way beyond generous-and I told him so,'' Bortz said. ''That`s when he told me that the asking price wasn`t just for the Eldorado but for three others he was throwing in-the `56 Biscayne and both the 1955 Cadillac LaSalle roadster and sedan.

''I couldn`t believe it. Four cars for the price of one, and he never even mentioned the other cars when I went to his yard to see the Eldorado.''

The offer wasn`t for a Biscayne or a LaSalle roadster and sedan but the Biscayne and the pair of LaSalles, all one-of-a-kind dream models.

Like the Eldorado, the cars showed a few signs of age, such as a broken window here, a hub cap missing there, metal floor pans covered with rust.

Perhaps the worst indignity was suffered by the Biscayne, which somehow had become shelter for a sapling. Actually, it was a sapling a few years ago. Now it was a tree with limbs climbing out the windows.

The `56 Caddy Eldorado Brougham dream car became the production model Eldorado in 1957. The Biscayne`s rear end, meanwhile, was borrowed for use on the `60 Corvair and the reverse fender and door insets were used on the Chevy Corvette.

The LaSalles were pure dream cars that didn`t become production models but did offer such oddities as exhaust ports in the rear doors and independent suspension systems made of chrome. Whether they made it into production or not, the LaSalles were one-of-a-kind dream cars, and that made them special, too.

''Two of the cars, the Biscayne and LaSalle roadster, were cut or partially dismantled, the Eldorado and LaSalle sedan weren`t,'' Bortz said.

From such abuse, there were pieces of the cars all over the place.

''It was like a treasure hunt trying to find all the pieces,'' Bortz said. ''Harry couldn`t remember where all the parts were. But he`d walk around the yard with his hands over his eyes like a mystic.

''He`d go over to a panel truck, open the door, and find a Biscayne seat inside.

''Once, in his office, Harry all of a sudden reached up into a rafter and pulled down a chrome generator from the LaSalle roadster. It had been stored up there for more than 30 years,'' Bortz said with a chuckle.

Bortz said he sent a friend of his over to the yard for the better part of a week, just looking for parts.

''How did Harry get those cars? I don`t know. Why didn`t he destroy them? I wasn`t going to ask,'' Bortz said.

''I do know one thing, however. Each of those cars had fiberglass bodies, and that`s why they`re still around today. If they had been built from steel, they would have been rusty powder, blowing in the wind.''

Enclosed car-carrier trucks were brought over to cart the treasures back to Illinois. Each of the priceless vehicles had to be coaxed on board by hand. The two-seat LaSalle roadster is built on a 99.9-inch wheelbase and is 151.7 inches long, which is smaller than a Chevrolet Chevette. The sedan is built on a 108-inch wheelbase and is 180 inches long, roughly the size of a Chevy Celebrity.

Both the roadster and LaSalle sedan were powered by aluminum, twin-cam, fuel-injected V-6 engines. Keep in mind these were dream cars in 1955.

The Chevy Biscayne is built on a 115-inch wheelbase and is 185.7 inches long. It was powered by a 215-horsepower V-8 engine, though the powerplant was missing when Bortz obtained the car. One will be added.

The Eldorado Brougham Town Car is built on a 129.5-inch wheelbase and is 219.9 inches long. A unique feature at the time was the electric door-lock system, which was automatically activated when the automatic transmission lever was put in the drive position.

Eldorado never had an engine. It was prepared for one but it was never installed. Bortz will put in an engine, promising all four one-of-a-kind cars will be driveable, once restored.

Bortz fancies himself as an archeologist successful at a dig, after getting his hands on the four unique vehicles.

''I`m saving artwork, preserving it so that people hundreds of years from now can look at it.

''The cars of the `50s were expressions of pride in post-war design, representatives of a time when people had a good feeling about themselves. Their cars epitomized that feeling.

''It was a period when bigger was better. To destroy these cars would be like taking all expressionist works out of a museum.

''You should leave something better than you found it; so I`m going to restore all the cars and get them running,'' he said. ''It should take about two years.''

Bortz won`t say what it cost to purchase the cars, much less what it will cost to restore them to working order.

''I don`t want to impress or depress people with the numbers,'' he said. However, he reluctantly revealed that coming up with a windshield for one of the old-timers can run $10,000, if you have to fabricate one yourself.

Bortz said there still are some missing pieces, but GM has been most cooperative in helping him restore the cars.

''GM even dug up some mechanical drawings on the cars so I can fabricate the parts I need,'' he said.

GM has developed a host of dream cars in recent years, but the days of hiding them away as potential collector pieces are over.

''No one can get the current dream cars,'' he said. ''GM is retaining them all.''

Is the collection now complete?

''There`s always the possibility more will show up,'' Bortz said, ''but I don`t know of any major dream cars still out.''